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While discussing President Obama's remarks on Romney's experience at Bain Capital, former Reagan Office of Management and Budget Director David Stockman stepped all over Romney's claims that his experience in the leveraged buyout business taught him anything at all about "job creation."

Here's what President Obama said earlier this week, which they opened up with in the segment from Fox Business Channel's After the Bell in the clip above: Obama On Romney’s Bain Experience: The President’s Job ‘Is Not Simply To Maximize Profits’:

During a press conference Monday afternoon, President Obama hit back against critics — including surrogate and Newark Mayor Cory Booker — who have expressed disappointment over his campaign’s effort to attack Mitt Romney’s record of job creation at Bain Capital, a leveraged buyout firm the former Massachusetts governor headed from 1984 to 1999.

“The reason this is relevant to the campaign is because my opponent, Governor Romney, his main calling card for why he thinks he should be president, is his business experience,” Obama said. “He is not going out there touting his experience in Massachusetts. He’s saying, ‘I’m a business guy, I know how to fix it.’” Obama explained that while private equity is “set up to maximize profits” for shareholders, the president is responsible for the health of the economy as a whole and fostering job creation.

Much to the chagrin of the two anchors on Fox Business, Stockman went off message when he responded to Asman's question about whose economic model the public is going to support:

ASMAN: So you have these two economic models. You have one exemplified by Bain Capital, which fails sometimes, but I think it has a success rate of about 70 percent and you have one of the federal government involvement in the economy. Which one do you think the American public is going to support?

STOCKMAN: Well, I don't know. I think the current federal model is a disaster. We know where we are on the debt. We're going to have a debt ceiling that expires in December and I don't know where the votes are going to come to increase it. But if they don't, then we'll have this huge sequester and we'll have all these tax cuts expiring. It is going to be really a thundering mess. So clearly what we're doing with fiscal policy and monetary policy at present, isn't working.

On the other hand, I don’t think Mitt Romney can legitimately say that he learned anything about how to create jobs in the LBO business. The LBO business is about how to strip cash out of old, long-in-the-tooth companies and how to make short-term profits.

Cue David Asman and his co-host Melissa Francis heads simultaneously exploding at the same time.

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This was a breath of fresh air rather than the usual nonsense we're hearing from Republicans with more "drill baby drill" as a way to control the price of oil and gasoline we're seeing rise again right now. From Fareed Zakaria GPS, former Reagan budget director David Stockman hit the nail on the head; stop with the warmongering and threatening Iran.

ZAKARIA: Do you think that's - what do you think will happen with oil? Because the demand certainly doesn't justify $105 barrel oil. I mean, China is -

STOCKMAN: I think you can address this decisively by stop beating the war drums right now. And Obama could do that, and he could say the neocons are history.

The policy that they're talking about right now is the same thing we heard in 2001, 2002, and 2003. And he needs to clearly say that we're not going to attack Iran. We're not going to permit Israel to attack Iran. They are not part of the axis of evil. They're part of the axis of medieval.

In other words, these are backward people that aren't going to threaten the western world, and we need to get into a serious process of negotiation. If we do that, the price of oil will drop $30 within a few months, and all the speculators who are on the wrong side of the ship would learn a good lesson.

But as long as the war drums continue to beat, as they are now, we're going to see this kind of speculative fraud. It's not real. It's not supply and demand world today.

Now if we could get the hawks in the United States Senate to listen to him -- Senate Trying To Force Obama To Go To War.

Full transcript below the fold.

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Rachel Maddow took The Wall Street Journal's Stephen Moore to task over his praise of Ronald Reagan's tax cuts and how they were supposedly so wonderful for America. As Rachel pointed out, they were great alright, if you were rich.

MAHER: Here's the part of Ronald Reagan I'm not so crazy about. There's a few things I'm not so crazy about. He introduced the religious right into politics...

MOORE: And turned around the US economy.

MAHER: Uh... okay. Well you know what, David Stockman says this:

The debt explosion has resulted not from big spending by the Democrats, but instead the Republican Party's embrace, about three decades ago [Ronald Reagan], of the insidious doctrine that deficits don't matter if they result from tax cuts.

Which George Bush the first called “Voodoo Economics”. It's still with us. Now what do you say to your fellow Republicans here...

MOORE: I'd say the Reagan tax cuts were the greatest economic policy of the last fifty years. They caused about a twenty year expansion...

MAHER: Okay but what (crosstalk). How could we afford the tax cuts that Obama and the Republicans just agreed on in December? How is that a good thing when...

MOORE: It's a good thing because we have to have the lowest tax rates in the world if we want to compete. I mean all the people in this audience will have jobs (crosstalk) if we have a pro-business, pro-competitive environment.

While Stephen Moore continually talked over her, Rachel Maddow attempted to explain how the deficit skyrocketed and that we had some of the worst income inequality in decades due to Reagan's policies. She'd finally had enough of him interrupting her and stood up to say this.

MADDOW: From 1980 until 1990, the top 1% saw their income go up by roughly 80%. The median wage in the country over ten years went up 3%. That means for the people who are best off on the country, it was the Matterhorn and for everybody else in the country, it was like this. (crosstalk) So if you were rich, Reagan was awesome. And if you were anybody else, it sucked.

David Stockman wrapped it up with pointing out how completely irresponsible the Republicans have been when it comes to spending. And Maher pointed out that their true strategy is to “starve the beast”.

For more on just how wonderfully trickle-down economics worked for most of us, here are a few articles.

Income inequality

Some thoughts -- and graphs -- on inequality and income

The United States of Inequality

And there are a couple of good articles on measuring income and a break down as to what some of the charts on income out there tell us here and here.

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In the wake of Keith Olbermann's departure from MSNBC, I at least was able to take a little solace watching the Wall Street Journal's Stephen Moore getting his ass handed to him on Real Time over the health-care law and insurance company mandates by MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, former Reagan adviser David Stockman and Bill Maher. Moore, of course, defended the hypocritical Republicans who thought a mandate was a great idea until a Democrat proposed it and gave us more of the "government takeover of health care" lie, which Rachel, thankfully, shot down.

I really don't know why Bill Maher thinks having Moore on as a guest contributes much to his show because the man strikes me as being as dumb as a box of rocks -- but who knows, maybe he's some genius and I'm just not seeing it. Whether he's just not that smart or crazy like a fox with his lies, what he does is lie. I don't understand how that adds to any kind of dialogue that moves our country to a place where we're solving our problems for the working class, whether some might consider it entertaining or not. Stephen Moore had nothing to add to this discussion other than hyperbole and lying GOP/Rupert Murdoch talking points.

The insurance mandates he's claiming are unconstitutional are something Republicans loved before a Democrat proposed them. And those high deductible plans he's touting just mean a lot of people don't get treatment when they're sick because they can't afford it. As Rachel recommended, we need to actually have a "government takeover" of our health insurance programs and Medicare for all and we'd be a lot better off. Moore would prefer to keep lining the insurance companies' pockets instead.

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As William Cohen noted, David Stockman continues to make the rounds after bucking with the Republicans on tax cuts for the rich last summer.

A Republican for Higher Taxes:

David Stockman has never been one to shy away from a roaring economic-policy debate. The former boy-wonder budget director in the first Reagan administration and the architect of Reagan’s supply-side economic policies, Stockman has been very busy lately rejecting the tax-cutting recommendations of Republicans in Washington and arguing that we must get our fiscal house in order or watch our way of life continue its decline. As an “imperialist power,” he says, America is in danger of being at “sundown.” Stockman, who turned 64 on Wednesday, has always been ahead of the curve on tax and fiscal issues, and it appears that he is ahead of it again this time, too. Read on...

Stockman continued his media appearances with CNN's Fareed Zakaria and went after the GOP for their single minded devotion to tax cuts.

Reagan Budget Director: GOP Has Abandoned Fiscal Responsibility By Adopting ‘Theology’ Of Tax Cuts:

As Congress prepares to take up extension of the Bush tax cuts during its lame duck session, Republican lawmakers have been unanimous in demanding that the cuts for the richest two percent of Americans be extended, claiming they are necessary for economic growth and that tax cuts (miraculously) pay for themselves.

While independent economists have shown these arguments to be false, today on CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS, President Reagan’s former budget director took on his own party for pushing this faulty logic. David Stockman, who led the all-important Office of Management and Budget under Reagan and was a chief architect of his fiscal policy, criticized today’s GOP for misreading Reagan’s legacy by adopting a “theology” of tax cuts. Stockman has spoken out before, but took perhaps his strongest stance yet against his own party today, saying “I’ll never forgive the Bush administration” for “destroying the last vestige of fiscal responsibility that we had in the Republican Party.”

Transcript below the fold.

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Time for your weekly Driftglass and Bluegal podcast. Enjoy everybody!

You can listen to past editions here and at http://dgbgpodcast.blogspot.com/, and the podcast is also available on i-Tunes. If you enjoy these as much as I do, donations are greatly appreciated. Please consider throwing five bucks in the hat.